Too bad there's no graphics card to go with it, I'm not aware of any other software that would do anything beyond Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 in the sound department. It also supports EAX (the very first 1.0). Well, there is an option to emulate Sound Blaster 16, but the one emulated by default is functionally superior (uses ES1371 chip).
When I tried to play, I ended up with garbled mess.Īnother thing about VMware, you need this driver for working sound. Then, the resolution list for software mode was empty. I managed to make it to menus in Half-Life, I had to change resolution in Display settings, the native resolution 1920x1080 that was automatically set by the driver did not work. But it seems to crap out even with basic DirectDraw stuff. VMware Workstation probably comes closest, at least I can confirm for the versions 12.5.7 and below (haven't upgraded to the latest version yet) that they come with additions compatible with Win98 guests, which gives mouse integration and a basic graphics card driver for better resolutions and 32-bit color. you're trying to run some newer more demanding game and you find out your CPU can't handle the emulation overhead.Īnyway, back on topic, AFAIK, a true hypervisor with full-blown Win9x support doesn't exist. Well, DOSBox covers the DOS for the most part unless eg. At least games written for Win9x are easier in a way that you don't have to deal with certain details that are required with DOS games since those access hardware directly. Some people also tend to believe the only way to run old games properly is on a PC or at least the approximation of the PC of the era. OP apparently already experienced that his CPU isn't powerful enough for the task (choppy audio), so I suggested alternative approach. Someone suggested PCem, which is an emulator and consequently requires a lot of horse power. The OP was looking for a way to run Win98 era games on his Win10 PC by using some sort of hypervisor. I didn't quote the whole OP's post because I find over-quoting everything pointless and a waste of space. Win3mu is in development, so maybe in the future these games could be run seamlessly along with other Windows applications, rather than having to run them in a virtual machine/emulator. 64-bit Windows systems don't support old 16-bit executables. There's another special case, Windows 3.1 era games. There are unofficial, community-developed patches for some games that may enable them to run on a modern system without a single workaround. So definitely search for patches that may have been made for a particular game.
It's also worth noting, there are still people out there that try to run their games without applying a single patch first and then they wonder why their game isn't working as it should (or at all). Not really a frame limiter, it's a software for recording games and taking screenshots, but can be used as a frame limiter and seems to work across a wide range of games and even supports pre-Direct3D 8 APIs, though the latter is not a concern if you go dgVoodoo way. I have no idea what AMD folks use, I just use DxTory on non-NVIDIA GPUs if I need a general frame limiter.
NVIDIA drivers even come with their own frame-limiter, accessible using NVIDIA Profile Inspector. When you have a game that's sensitive to speed, there are tools for limiting frame-rate. PCem can indeed emulate Voodoo 2 graphics card, but, because it's an emulator, it wastes tons of CPU cycles emulating some slow-a** PC from the nineties, choppy audio is another possible side effect. If I remember correctly, Virtual PC 2007 only has the S3 graphics card that doesn't have any 3D acceleration whatsoever. Though reading Virtual PC 2007 had you covered, your games must be pretty simple or you had no idea you could run them with enhanced graphics. There may be issues with getting some games to install, possible workarounds include either getting a newer version of InstallShield setup binary, copying game files from CD, installing on a virtual machine with an older OS and copying game files from it, etc. You can also ask for help on VOGONS forums if particular game hasn't been covered. Read its documentation for the rest of goodies.
Another interesting feature is resolution scaling. It's not unusual that the Glide mode offers the best graphics fidelity for the games that have it. It's an easy workaround for quirks that may happen when running old DIrectDraw/Direct3D games on modern Windows versions with modern drivers and for games offering rendering via Glide API.
The package contains wrappers for the old graphics APIs (DirectDraw/DIrect3D 1 - 8 and Glide 1 - 3).
You should consider running your games on Windows 10 with the help of dgVoodoo2. Any solutions that wouldn't require me to drag an old Pentium III box out of storage would be greatly appreciated.